Page 19 - Environmental Nanotechnology Applications and Impacts of Nanomaterials

Nanotechnology and the Environment 5

model for what was first called sanitary engineering, was expanded
during the last century to include the study of impacts of human activ-
ities on air, soils, groundwater, and other environmental media. Today,
the standard model for teaching and research in an environmental
engineering program covers bases in the areas of air, water, and soil
with crosscutting areas of expertise such as fluid mechanics, chem-
istry, microbiology, physical chemical processes, and, occasionally, policy.
Some programs additionally also include a consideration of impacts on
human health and ecosystems.
It is increasingly clear that long-range solutions to environmental
problems must also address “upstream” issues associated with the
inputs of energy and materials to our society. The recent concern with
potential environmental impacts of nanomaterials is one manifestation
of the need for such an approach. Students of environmental engineer-
ing must be able to address the impacts of energy and materials as they
are used by our society on downstream receptors such as air, water,
soil, human health, and ecosystems. Our energy systems and systems
for producing, using, and disposing of materials must be designed with
a view toward the full life-cycle effects of these systems. Environmental
engineers should be literate in processes for energy generation, raw
materials acquisition, and materials processing that will allow them to
work with other engineers and scientists to design systems in this life-
cycle context.
The urgent demands for interdisciplinary solutions to environmental
problems that stem from materials and energy use coincide with a con-
vergence of disciplines at the nanometric scale. In contrast with a view
of interdisciplinarity that entails an ever-expanding grouping of over-
lapping disciplines from the top down, convergence at the nanoscale is
a vision of interdisciplinarity from the bottom up that can be particu-
larly powerful as a basis for rigorous science and engineering education.
Nowhere is such an approach more appropriate than in the environ-
mental arena, where problem solving draws on principles from multi-
ple disciplines, including biology, chemistry, physics, and information
science.
Science is social. From the office water cooler and coffee machine to
the conferences we organize, great effort is placed in the scientific
community on creating conditions that nurture social interactions
between researchers, facilitating the improvisation and collective cre-
ativity that are built on an exchange of ideas. For the time being,
advanced instrumentation is the coffee machine of this nanoscale
interdisciplinarity as well as the portal to the molecular realm. This
will change with time as these techniques become more commonplace
(just as the use and availability of digital computers have become
widespread). However, the current need for researchers to pass through